Musicians
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Fortnite’s Ariana Grande concert offers a taste of music in the metaverse
Ariana Grande strutted and soared around a candy-colored series of Fortnite sets in Epic’s latest major in-game live music event. The multi-day “tour” offered gamers and Grande fans alike plenty to enjoy while showcasing Epic’s impressively smooth and visually inventive vision for live events that millions of people can enjoy simultaneously.
Fortnite players have known an Ariana Grande event was in the works for a while, and the concert followed previous in-game events featuring rapper Travis Scott and Marshmello. Scott’s in-game performance saw 12.3 million live viewers, a number that the Ariana Grande event is likely to top, given that it ran over multiple days.
Epic put up a video of the concert that’s well worth checking out, if only to marvel at the kind of stuff that’s possible in gaming worlds these days. Experiencing the event live in the game is obviously ideal, but the video captures the experience pretty well, minus the sense of presence from having an avatar zooming around the space with grande Grande.
This time around, the show featured a handful of mini-games that gave players more to do than just flying around while a gigantic virtual pop star does her thing. The sequence kicked off with players surfing a rainbow racetrack, hitting power ups in a cross between Mario Kart and Splatoon to “Come & Go” by Juice WRLD and Marshmello. The racetrack sequence was followed by bouncing players through a Dr. Seuss-style landscape with candy-pink trees and giant floating eyeballs before dropping them into a mini-game shooting down the game’s Storm King boss to Wolfmother’s “Victorious.”
Grande made her Fortnite debut a few songs in with the 2019 hit “7 Rings,” streaking across the sky and materializing on top of a planet suspended in a sea of stars. Later she soared through the clouds with angelic wings as players followed, suspended in rainbow bubbles. In the coolest portion, a skyscraper-high Grande ascended a series of Escher-esque staircases with a giant diamond mallet before slinging it to shatter the sky, shotput-style.
Fortnite’s latest event didn’t have any huge surprises, but that’s only because Epic sets the bar so high. Getting dressed up in your favorite skin to sail around a skyscraper-tall pop star along with millions of people around the world might not be everyone’s vision for the metaverse, but Fortnite’s wildly imaginative live events are a taste of the future that here’s right now.
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Roblox to host its first virtual concert, featuring Lil Nas X
Roblox this morning announced a partnership with Columbia Records that will allow it to bring a virtual concert experience featuring Lil Nas X to its gaming platform. Notably, this will be Roblox’s first-ever virtual concert, and follows similar events that have been held during the pandemic, like the “One World: Together At Home” concert to benefit WHO in April, and Fortnite’s Travis Scott concert hosted in-game, which attracted 12.3 million concurrent players at its peak.
The Lil Nas X concert, meanwhile, will be hosted in an online event space custom-designed by Roblox to allow for an immersive experience. There will be several different stages, each inspired by Lil Nas X’s songs and music videos, that will use a variety of technologies, including the latest in shadowing, lighting and physically based rendering (PBR) facial recognition technologies, the company says.
During the concert, Lil Nas X will also perform his new single “Holiday” for the first time live, as well as other popular hits.
The event itself will actually be run over three showings, starting with the main event on Saturday, November 14th at 1 PM PST. The Asia showing will follow at 10 PM PST, then the European show will be on Sunday, November 15 at 9 AM PST.
In addition, Roblox and Columbia Records will host a Q&A with Lil Nas X that will be streamed in the concert venue with a preshow at 4 PM on Friday Novemebr 13.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Columbia Records to bring Lil Nas X fans and the Roblox community together in an entirely new way,” said Jon Vlassopulos, global head of Music at Roblox, in a statement about the event. “This concert with Lil Nas X will transport players and their friends into the Metaverse, and bring to life the future of what immersive, social experiences can look like.”
Ahead of the event, the new concert venue will feature mini games and other activities for players to explore, as well as a virtual store offering exclusive merchandise, like accessories, emotes and Lil Nas X avatar bundles.
“We’re throwing the biggest virtual concert of 2020, and I hope everybody in the world can come check it out,” said Lil Nas X, in a statement. “I feel very lucky to be the first artist to ever do this on Roblox. We had so much fun putting this together for my fans, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it,” he added.
Roblox has been signaling an interest in expanding its platform beyond gaming in recent months, as the pandemic fueled a jump in monthly users and player spending, as well as a desire for virtual activities in general. The company in July reported it had grown to more than 150 million monthly active users, up from the 115 million it had in February, before the U.S.’s shelter-in-place orders had kicked in.
It also in July launched “Party Place,” a virtual venue focused on hanging out for meetups or birthday parties.
The shift to virtual platforms for socializing has helped boost Roblox revenues, as well.
One third-party estimate, from Sensor Tower, pegged Roblox mobile spending at $94 million in September. It also suggested Roblox had passed $2 billion in spending to date. A more recent report from Safe Betting Sites estimated Roblox players spent $820 million in total from January through September 2020.
The gaming company is poised to IPO, but a date has not been disclosed.
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Fortnite hosted a psychedelic Travis Scott concert and 12.3M people watched
The idea of an in-game Travis Scott concert might seem a little silly — particularly if, like me, you’re not really a Fortnite player.
Yes, the popular multiplayer game has hosted other promotional events for movies and music. But even if all this COVID-19 imposed isolation has left you hungry for live performances, why not watch actual footage of Travis Scott in concert?
What Scott and Fortnite-maker Epic Games delivered, however, is a gloriously surreal “astronomical” event, with an enormous, kaiju-sized Scott avatar looming over players and teleporting around the venue while the visuals around him get increasingly psychedelic. It’s something that could only happen in a virtual concert, and that’s what makes it delightful.
Plus, the event was viewed by far more people than could ever pack into even the largest concert venue. Epic Games said 12.3 million concurrent players participated, a new record for the game.
You can watch for yourself in the video above, but if you want to actually interact with a giant Travis Scott while he sings “Sicko Mode,” Epic Games is planning encore events throughout the weekend.
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How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars
Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own niche of fans scattered around the world.
(This is the third installment of our EC-1 series on Kobalt Music Group and changes in the music industry. Read Part I and Part II.)
As Spotify gained rapid adoption in his native Sweden in 2006, Kobalt’s founder & CEO Willard Ahdritz predicted music streaming and the rise of social media would increasingly undercut the gatekeeping power of the major label groups and realign the market to center more on a vast landscape of niche musicians than a handful of traditional superstars.
Both of these predictions have proven directionally true. The question is to what extent and how are industry players actually realigning as a result?
What musicians need in addition to the administrative collection of their royalties (explained in Part II) is a menu of creative services they can tap for support. Kobalt’s AWAL and Kobalt Music Publishing divisions provide such services to recording artists and songwriters, respectively, and do so on purely a services basis (getting paid a commission but not taking ownership of copyrights like traditional labels and publishers do).
Niche middle class vs. Global superstars
Image via Getty Images / rolfo eclaire
The whole music industry is growing substantially due to streaming music’s mainstream penetration in wealthier countries and increased penetration in emerging markets.
As the overall pie is growing, the non-superstar segment of the market is indeed growing faster than the superstar segment, taking over a larger portion of industry royalties.
According to data from BuzzAngle, the top 500 songs in the US in 2018 accounted for 10% of on-demand audio streams — a dramatic decline in market share compared to 2017 when the top 500 songs accounted for 14% of streams. Stepping back, the top 50,000 songs made up 73.2% of all US streams in 2017 but that declined to 70.5% in 2018.
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Flipagram’s Stories Are Sticky And You Can Now Create 60-Second Flips
In case you’ve forgotten about Flipagram, we told you about them back in July when they raised $70 million and said they had 30 million users. The company started out as an app to create quick slide shows to share on services like Facebook and Instagram. Seeing ridiculous traction, the team added all of the components the product needed to be its own social network.
It’s… Read More
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Shazam Takes On Apple Music Connect With New Social Features Aimed At Musicians And Their Fans
Music discovery platform Shazam is today rolling out a new feature in partnership with over two dozen artists that will allow Shazam users to see which songs their favorite musicians are listening to on the service. The news comes just ahead of Apple Music’s worldwide debut tomorrow, which will introduce streaming music, radio and other features,… Read More
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